Meet The New Mate S

Huawei has come quite far with its smartphone business, and it looks like they’re not stopping any time soon. The Huawei Mate S is marketed to be their highest-end smartphone yet, and at a price point that is similar to many other premium phones, what sets it apart from the rest of the group?

The Huawei Mate S is certainly a beautiful phone. The unit we received for review is clad in a shiny gold finish, with the device’s metal unibody fits like a glove in our hands. Powered by Huawei’s own HiSilicon Kirin 935 processor, with 3GBs of RAM and 64GBs of storage, the Huawei flagship goes one further by sporting support for dual-SIM, with one of those slots also doubling as a microSD card slot, allowing users to expand their storage options even further.

At the back of the Mate S’ 5.5 inch Full HD LED display, the Huawei Mate S sports an impressive 13MP camera that features optical image stabilisation with dual-tone LED flash and a front-facing 8MP camera. The cameras are also coupled with an amazingly easy-to-use camera software that allows you to not only use the camera in different modes, but also allow you to change various settings such as aperture, shutter speed, ISO and exposure levels, just like on actual cameras.

Underneath the camera is a fingerprint sensor, and it’s by far one that works very well. With it, you can immediately unlock your phone without having to key in the pin number, use it as a shutter button, and call up the notifications list. This is easily one of the best features on the phone, simply because of the phone unlock feature, which does not require you to even press the power button first.

On top of that, there is also the Knuckle 2.0 feature, which allows you to open apps instantly simply by drawing letters on the display using your knuckle. Not only that, you can also use this feature to do stuff like crop and edit images and record your on-screen activities as well.

Performance-wise, the Huawei Mate S is quite the stand-out performer. Thanks to the Kirin 935 processor and 3GBs of RAM, the phone hardly feels sluggish no matter what task we throw at it. That being said however, the battery life on the phone is a bit on the weak side, as the most we can get out of it is roughly seven to eight hours of usage on a full charge.

CHIP CONCLUDE: The Huawei Mate S is undoubtedly a really good phone. With a much more competitive price point, and improved battery life, we’re sure it will be a must-have for many.